Sadie Sink has been a welcome addition to the Stranger Things cast since her introduction in Season 2. As the confident girl next door, Max shook things up and brought a well-needed and valuable addition to the Hawkins gang, especially in Season 2 when El (Millie Bobby Brown) was separated from them. We got to see her romance with Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) bloom in Season 2, and her friendship with El was a core element of Season 3. Max goes through a lot during her time on the show, from grief to trauma to the hardships of a broken home, and Sadie Sink tackles all these emotions and plotlines with her unwavering talent.
In Season 4, Max finds herself feeling utterly alone and destroyed having lost her brother, Billy (Dacre Montgomery), in the aftermath of the final fight in Season 3. Her relationship with Billy was fairly complicated since he was a far cry from being a good brother and made Max’s life difficult at every turn. However, his final words were those of repentance to Max before he sacrificed himself trying to shut down the Mind Flayer at the Starcourt Mall. With her mother drinking more and more and her stepfather having dropped out of the picture, Max feels completely isolated and increasingly confused about how to feel and grieve the death of a brother she loved but never liked.
It’s a character turn made riveting thanks to the performance of Sink who imbues each minute of her screen time with so much emotion. Sink’s acting is so magnificent to behold that her scenes stick out sorely in the first few episodes for a number of reasons. Firstly, the series decides to take its time to get things going and so while the first two episodes aren’t particularly strong, they do manage to get the ball rolling on Max’s arc and give her some well-deserved attention. Secondly, Sink’s acting is so surprisingly powerful even in smaller scenes that she almost seems older than her Hawkins cohorts. While Stranger Things is led by an ensemble of fantastic young talent, Sink comes out as such a clear breakout that the strangest thing of all would be her not getting some serious recognition come award season.
It should also be noted that Sadie Sink's talents are not limited to Stranger Things. Her acting prowess in singer-songwriter Taylor Swift’s ten-minute ode to her heartbreak saw her steal scenes from Dylan O’Brien, an actor significantly older and more experienced than her. It’s no wonder that she received much more praise for the music video. Even her own additions to the video, such as an improvised argument scene showcased her talents. These talents are put on full display in the fourth episode of Season 4 of Stranger Things, "Dear Billy."
The episode directed by Shawn Levy is currently one of the highest-rated episodes of the series and has become a series highlight, going as far as to propel a song featured in it, Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill’ into the top ten of the Global Spotify, despite having been released decades ago. The episode has particularly garnered acclaim for Sink’s performance as she is seen grappling with her mixed feelings for her dead brother, the isolation she feels with the lack of a proper family support system as well as other changes in her life. This includes El moving to the other side of the country, and her breakup with Lucas which was spurred on by the death of her brother. Add to this the nightmares and visions she begins seeing, and you can see why Max is at the end of her rope. All this comes to head in the fourth episode of the new season, where Max has to find a way to deal with the fact that she could very well be Vecna’s next kill.
Another actor would have likely whittled all of this down to portray a dour snarky kid, the likes of which we’ve seen pop up many times in entertainment mediums. Sink manages to retain Max’s sense of self even when she isn’t as enamored by the trivial pursuits of her classmates and is more preoccupied with the grim realities of her new life. From humoring Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) with some top-class sarcasm to her painful epilogue to her brother, Sink’s performance as Sadie shines. She is in a league of her own with such a charismatic performance of a character that refuses to be victimized or made out to be a cliché as she faces almost unbeatable odds. It’s a nuanced performance of an actor well beyond her years.
While Millie Bobby Brown, David Harbour, and Natalia Dyer all get their own moments to shine this season, Sink is the true MVP for how she takes a character that could have very well been swallowed up by her grief and faded into the background and makes her out to be a silently resilient but ultimately powerful and essential character in the series. It’s no wonder that her skills have caused co-star Winona Ryder to remark that “Sadie is like Liv Ullman, She’s going to be like Meryl Streep.”
It’s high praise indeed and one that gains further credence in the actor’s upcoming projects. The twenty-year-old actress will next star in Dear Zoe, a film about a girl losing her sister in a hit-and-run on the day of 9/11 as well as the upcoming A24 Darren Aronofsky-Brendan Fraser pic The Whale. With such strong reviews for her performance this season, as well as upcoming high-profile films in motion, Sadie Sink's future is looking more than promising.